Short-lived electron transfer in donor-bridge-acceptor systems

Abstract

We investigate time-dependent electron transfer (ET) in benchmark donor-bridge-acceptor systems. For the small bridge sizes studied, we obtain results far different from the perturbation theory which underlies scattering-based approaches, notably a lack of destructive interference in the ET for certain arrangements of bridge molecules. We also calculate wavepacket transmission in the non-steady-state regime, finding a featureless spectrum, while for the current we find two types of transmission: sequential and direct, where in the latter, the current transmission increases as a function of the energy of the transferred electron, a regime inaccessible by conventional scattering theory.